Lefferts named interim director of Korff School

Peter M. Lefferts, a longtime faculty member, has been named interim director of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Glenn Korff School of Music, effective July 16.

He replaces departing director John W. Richmond, who stepped down to become the dean of the College of Music at the University of North Texas in Denton starting Aug. 1.

Lefferts is professor of music history and a two-term Hixson-Lied Professor from 2009 to 2015. He has been the associate director of the Glenn Korff School of Music since 2014.

Lefferts came to UNL in 1989. His teaching responsibilities have spanned a broad range from introductory courses in listening for freshman non-majors and courses in music history and theory for undergraduate majors to doctoral seminars.

In summer 2006, he stepped down as the head of the division of music history/theory/composition after being in that role for 17 years. He was appointed in fall 2007 to be the chief adviser for UNL music majors on the bachelor of arts and bachelor of music degrees before becoming associate director.

In 1997, Lefferts won a “People Who Inspire” Award from Mortarboard. In 2009, he won a UNL Teaching Council and Parents Association Certificate of Recognition for Contribution to Students. In 2010, he won the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts Achievement Award in Academic Advising.

Professor Lefferts has lectured and published extensively in North America and Europe. As an author and editor, Lefferts’ areas of research specialization include medieval and Renaissance English music, the medieval motet, early music notation, early music theory in Latin and English, the tonal behavior of 14th and 15th century songs, and the relationship between church architecture and liturgy. He has also published on topics in American music history.

He is a member of the international advisory board of the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music based at Oxford University, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature at Indiana University. At UNL, he directs the web-based project Texts on Music in English from the Medieval and Early Modern Eras, which can be found here, and he runs a project center of the Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum. He also served a full term as the director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at UNL from 2001 to 2004.

Lefferts holds a bachelor of arts, master of arts, master of philosophy and doctoral degree, all from Columbia University. Before coming to UNL, he taught at Columbia University and the University of Chicago.

Dean Charles O’Connor said a national search will begin this fall for a new director for the school of music.